


the long way around

by freloux



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hopeful Ending, Sloppy Seconds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-07-14 22:53:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7194170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freloux/pseuds/freloux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sex with the ex across time and space.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the long way around

**Author's Note:**

> "Yet now of all that city I remember only a woman I casually met there who detain'd me for love of me,  
> Day by day and night by night we were together—all else has long been forgotten by me,  
> I remember I say only that woman who passionately clung to me,  
> Again we wander, we love, we separate again..."  
> -"Once I Pass'd Through a Populous City" by Walt Whitman

"It's just a bit of a detour," Clara lies.

"Time loops are to be used only for good, not weird catch-up sex with former lovers," Ashildr reminds her. She tries to block the console, but Clara's too quick: she pushes the right buttons, sets the course, and they're - she's - already off. "This is just something..." Clara starts to say, but the words aren't coming out right. She can't quite explain it, how it's a compelling need.

"Suit yourself." Ashildr rolls her eyes and wanders off to flop on a couch with a magazine. She's muttering something about addictions and it makes Clara shiver, remembering.

That's not the only thing making her shiver as she heads out of the diner in search of him. The evidence of her last encounter with the Doctor, previously warm and tucked up inside her, is starting to drip back out and catch on her underwear, making the fabric feel thick and wet.

Clara knows exactly how this will go. Crowded city, summer heat spreading its cloak over her. Sweat at the back of her neck. Aliens made of bluish glass move slowly, robotically around her. She'll nudge one of them aside and there he will be and they'll get to talking. A moment of connection, that chance she was compelled to take when she ran into him the first time. She's also travelling. Of course she'd run into him. Clara retraces back over the path that led her to him before and wonders once again what he's doing here, standing at the street corner like he's waiting for something - or maybe someone. He won't remember, Clara keeps reminding herself, but she likes to hold out hope that each time they do this he'll get one step closer.

There are guidelines about time loops. Can't interfere too much, can't ask leading questions. She knows this, but Clara still wants to ask him where he's been, who with, if he's got different rules now about touching. Maybe so: he allows her to take his hand when they walk into the coffee shop he was standing outside. In a back booth he confesses that there's a girl he's been seeing a lot, someone who looks sort of like her. That she keeps reappearing and it's nice to have that one constant. Clara blinks back tears. She's heard that little speech a few times now but it never gets any easier. As if hypothesising aloud, he wonders if she might be the girl from before. She can't let it get to her, how even if she said yes he wouldn't believe her.

He seems to need this too, so even though it's like following a script, she kisses him anyway, sweet and secret. Clara thinks she sees - wants to believe that she sees - a glimmer of recognition when he pulls away. But she can't risk asking him. Kissing is easier. At least the glass robots have seen this before and leave them alone. Kissing him is like slipping back into a favourite outfit, something well-worn and comfortable. As they kiss, she can feel more of his come squishing back out of her. It soaks into the fabric of her underwear in a way that's almost futile, too thick to be able to move anywhere else. The sensation brings with it a feeling of loss: she wants him so badly, wants him to give it to her again with nothing in the way. Nothing to keep them apart.

First, though, she has to wait and take his lead, has to be satisfied for now with letting the kiss progress as it will. Clothes rumpled, hands eager, until he stops and asks her something. It's an odd request, he begins, but she looks enough like her, like that girl he thinks he used to know. So would she mind if they - "I've. I've got a room." He stares at his hands, waiting for her to answer. Clara tells him yes, leaving off the bit where she explains that she doesn't mind at all. How even though she knows it from the last time, it's still nice to hear. The Doctor playing the gentleman as always. Leading her into a hotel-ish room in a hotel-ish building. It's better this way. If it happened in the TARDIS it might be a bit too much for her.

The room is all white and beige, with a balcony just outside and glass walls that let in the sun and the heat. Clara turns around while she undresses, trying to get out of her waitress uniform as quickly as possible because it reminds her too much of the past. When she takes off her underwear there's nothing in the way now for his come to land on. She shudders as it pulses out of her, sluicing down her thighs in shining lines. She knows him, but he doesn't know her. The way she looks both familiar and not familiar enough. So she stays facing away from him and lets him come to her.

She puts her hands on the glass and watches the city below, the robotic aliens walking back and forth like fish in an aquarium. Bracing herself back, trying not to appear as pleading as she feels while he holds her hips and pushes into her. Halfway at first, too hesitant to be teasing. His teeth graze her neck as if he's leaving some kind of reminder for himself, even though by the next time he'll have forgotten they've even done this, that they were together at all. There's still a tiny purple mark there from the last time, a guidebook for how he touched her before.

Still, though, it's like sex with a stranger. Every time for him is the first time, even if she remembers. She just wants him to remember, too, remember how they've done this before, to know the reason why she's still sloppy. He slip-slides up into her, thrusting easily, the way made smooth by the come that's clinging there still. Once he's established a good rhythm, he snakes his hand around to draw back the little hood that covers her clit, tracing over the exposed bud as if to memorise its minute grooves. And Clara would like than anything else to tell him _yes, memorise me_ , if that's what he needs, if these are the tiny details that will lead him back to her.

Her legs are shaking. She wants to reach back, hold the hand that's still on her hip, but she can't afford to assume that kind of intimacy. Both his hearts are hammering into her back. With her but not with her, moving inside her in a way that is familiar enough to tug at her heart. That, more than anything else, is what finally makes her come, so hard she whimpers as she soaks his cock. The balance tips, then, and he comes not long after: an almost nervous flutter deep inside her.

It's almost overwhelming: there's too much still there from the last time. It won't even all fit inside her, it just drips back out thick and slow to splatter heavily on the floor. An ending, but also like a start. He holds her and whispers "Thank you" into her neck. There's a note of possibility there, like he's about to say something else, maybe even her name. It seems to her that he might be on his way to remembering after all.

She can wait for that, she's got the time.


End file.
